We are thrilled to welcome Micah Smalley to Anathoth! Through a new partnership with the Johnson Service Corps (through the Episcopal Service Corps), Micah will spend the next year at Anathoth learning about, participating in, and deepening our farming and communications work. Come out to a workday and help us welcome Micah! Here’s her own introduction:

Hi everybody, my name is Micah Smalley and I’m doing an internship with Anathoth for just about a year through the Johnson Service Corps! I’m from northern Virginia, and recently graduated from Virginia Tech where I studied Environmental Horticulture, with a minor in Civic Agriculture and Food Systems. It was through my minor that I realized I wanted to do work to make food more accessible in areas of low-income and low-food access. Most of my education and work experience has been in ornamental, horticultural crops, and I was drawn to Anathoth because of the mission and the ability to gain experience in growing and harvesting vegetable crops.

What I’m looking forward to the most about this year is the ability to be working on a farm for a solid year. Because all of my farming experience has always been short-term, there’s a lot I haven’t seen or experienced, and I’m looking forward to gaining a fuller understanding and insight about how a farm works. In the future, I’d love to be able to work full-time with a community garden or farm in a food desert in order to make food more accessible, and allow people to learn how to grow food themselves to enable them to become more self-sufficient.

In my free time I love to play musical instruments and sing. I’ve recently gotten into making pies from scratch, and hope to be able to find the time to make one again soon. I like to relive my childhood by playing games on the Nintendo 64 in my basement, and I wish I was more into yoga.

I’m truly looking forward to this year with Anathoth, and hope I get to meet you all at the garden and around the community!